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Dear Friends,
Today National Mission on Libraries has been launched. To make the mission possible, we need enthusiastic library professionals in Group ‘B’ and ‘C’ category. But in recent years, enthusiasm of library professional is degrading due to lack of proper promotion policy.
Have a look on this paper which highlights some of the important issues on this topic and give your valuable comments.
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Dear Dr. Singh,
Thanks for your post and congratulation for the article in the latest issue of University News. I have gone through the article earlier as the issue came to our library.
Really, the confusion of vacancy based promotion vs. time scale promotion for library staff is a matter of concern both at University as well as Central Government Service.
Recently, I had a discussion with CAG people about this and they opined that Promotions are possible only against vacant posts! But as I asked about the assessment of Assistant Professor to Associate Professor without any vacant post at Associate Professor level, they started fumbling!! I felt sorry for them as they had nothing to explain in defense to their statement. The government has adopted a dual policy for staff in lower scale and rank and those in higher scale or rank. I feel that the outlook has not changed throughout the years. Some decades ago, when I worked in a ICMR institute and been striving for time scale promotion of technical & administrative staff of ICMR (in the line of CSIR) I happened to meet the then Sr. DDG (Administration) at the ICMR guest House. When I asked him about this anomalies, he quite roughly replied do you want to compare a Scientist with a Sweeper?? The gentleman was an IAS Officer and it was quite befitting for a bureaucrat, but I sensed that there are some sort of mental blockage in thinking by the policy implementing authorities. For example, though the Chattopadhyaya Commission has recommended for categorization of Libraries and corresponding pay scales and designation way back in 1990, the ICMR Librarians had to move to Supreme Court to get it implemented and the end product had been partial implementation.(however, during June 2013, ICMR has brought out a revised recruitment Rules for its Library Staff!!) And many other institutions never bothered to implement it at all still today. It results extreme confusion and frustration among personnel in Libraries everywhere .
The NLM sounds to be good (The recommendations of Chattopadhyaya Commission were good too!!) but as I have elapsed several decades in government service and experienced unbearable and suffocating bureaucratic attitudes, I personally feel that we should better keep our expectations on the bottom line as the mental blockage still exist among implementing authorities.
However, in case I am proven wrong, I will be extremely happy for my young colleagues.
Sincerely,
Siddhartha S. Ray, Calcutta
Dear Mr. Ray
Many thanks for your comments. I am fully agreed with your views. My one of the friend Mr. Rajesh Pandey who has worked in ICMR Library Delhi has told about these anomalies. In every pay commission, our senior LIS professionals are only interested in up-gradation of Group 'A' posts. They never take care for Group 'B' and 'C' cadre posts which are the backbone for any efficient library system.
That's why I raised these issues through this paper so that atleast some message should reach to the policy makers.
Anil Singh
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